https://denisegrollmus.com www.denisegrollmus.com Wed, 05 May 2021 17:21:39 +0000 https://denisegrollmus.com en https://denisegrollmus.com/Artist-as-Storyteller Wed, 05 May 2021 17:21:39 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Artist-as-Storyteller Artist a Storyteller <img width="3226" height="2112" width_o="3226" height_o="2112" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0a8d1645568e2ad843d898e77fe76a5413f0c46e4efb96e8b547c90ca987e161/Screen-Shot-2021-05-05-at-10.28.22-AM.png" data-mid="107538327" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0a8d1645568e2ad843d898e77fe76a5413f0c46e4efb96e8b547c90ca987e161/Screen-Shot-2021-05-05-at-10.28.22-AM.png" /> In 2020, I began working with South Seattle College faculty to build an artist speakers series to share their work and connect with students about what it means to be an artist in today’s social and cultural climate. The series emphasizes the art-making and storytelling process as it relates to the individual and community. We launched our series at the end of the Winter 2021 and have been doing online events every other week throughout Spring 2021. You can see more about our series at our website, which I built using Cargo in February 2021. https://denisegrollmus.com/The-Sacred-Disease Wed, 13 Nov 2019 03:35:23 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/The-Sacred-Disease The Sacred Disease: Narratives of Addiction and the Making of the Post-Secular Self &nbsp; The Sacred Disease: Narratives of Addiction and the Making of the Post-Secular Self examines questions of secularism, agency, and religious phenomenology through the study of literary and popular representations of addiction. Where medical discourse marks addiction as a psychological and/or physiological aberration of the normatively moderate self, stories of addiction told from the perspective of addicts often employ religious and spiritual ontologies alongside and against this model to express addiction as a normative, spiritual condition. Working across disciplines, my attention to religious discourse not only recenters addicts as the experts of their own experience, but it also historicizes and challenges normative assumptions about choice, disease, and dependence, as well as suspicious readings of these texts. In each chapter, I focus on a different text and religious framework, including the Pueblo cosmovision of Leslie Marmon Silko’s 1978 novel&nbsp;Ceremony, Mary Karr’s conversion to Catholicism in her 2009 memoir Lit, the rite of confession in Lars von Trier’s 2014 film Nymph()maniac, and the employment of diasporic religions such as Santeria and Voodoo in the television show True Blood (2008-2014). My work’s interdisciplinarity has been recognized through funding in multiple departments, including a dissertation fellowship from the Department of English and a Harlan Hahn Disability Studies grant. I successfully defended my dissertation in December 2018 and received the 2019 Heilman Dissertation prize for best dissertation in the UW English Department. My manuscript is currently under review at academic presses. https://denisegrollmus.com/Village-Voice-Media Mon, 11 Nov 2019 23:10:27 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Village-Voice-Media Village Voice Media 2005-2013 I worked as a journalist for the New Times Media/Village Voice Media from 2005 to 2013—-first as a full-time staff writer at Cleveland Scene and then as a national features writer. These are links to some of my features. “Checkmate,” SF Weekly (and other VVM papers), January 23, 2013. Prosecutors team with debt collectors to terrorize consumers in ways both highly profitable and usually illegal. "Doom or Boom," Village Voice (and other VVM papers), September 19, 2012.America's Hydraulic Fracturing Gold Rush portends the greatest environmental disaster of a generation.&nbsp;"Joe Paterno and the Danger of Making Gods Out Of Men," LA Weekly (and other VVM papers), November 11, 2011. An essay on the firing of Joe Paterno.“The King of Spin,” Cleveland Scene, December 5, 2007. How Dennis Kucinich remade himself from a race-baiting bomb thrower to a liberal sweetheart. “Jesus for Sale,” Cleveland Scene, October 31, 2007. Meet the real Rex Humbard, the father of televised religious fraud. “Hollow Victory,” Cleveland Scene, October 2, 2007Bands accuse the “anti-corporate” label, Victory Records, of being corporate at its worst.&nbsp;“The Tomato Can Man,” Cleveland Scene, August 8, 2007Jim Holley produced America’s worst fighters, and he’s proud of it.“Amish Girls Gone Wild,” Cleveland Scene, March 14, 2007Behind the bonnet is a girl who just wants to have fun -- and another beer, please.&nbsp;“The Great Pretenders,” Cleveland Scene, November 1, 2007They’re defrauding the legends of soul -- and it’s perfectly legal.“To Rob a Predator,” Cleveland Scene, September 20, 2006For one Iraq vet, Dateline inspired the perfect crime.&nbsp;“The Wrong Crowd,” Cleveland Scene, April 12, 2006Steven Spade was beheaded by his friends. Not even the killers know why.“All The President’s Men,” Cleveland Scene, October 19, 2005Meet the biggest predatory lender in Cleveland -- America’s new ambassador to the Netherlands.“Sex Thief,” Cleveland Scene, September 14, 2005Over 25 years and six dropped rape cases, Hy Doan has perfected the art of stealing sex. “Suicide Bridge,” Cleveland Scene, June 8, 2005Where bodies fall from the sky.“Kill Bill,” Cleveland Scene, March 30, 2005Microsoft’s army of lawyers was no match for a kid from Kent State.&nbsp;“Stoll Survivors,” Cleveland Scene, December 15, 2004. Racial slurs? Unpaid overtime? Indiscriminate firings? Welcome to Ed's farm. https://denisegrollmus.com/Poland-Writings Wed, 13 Nov 2019 03:10:22 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Poland-Writings Poland Writings, 2012-13 The following are links to some of the pieces I wrote while on a Fulbright in Warsaw, Poland (2012-13). I was researching and writing about what some refer to as the “revival” in Jewish life after the fall of Communism.&nbsp; "The Jewish Revival In Poland," Sounds Jewish Podcast, The Guardian, June 5, 2013. This audio story was, in many ways, a culmination of my year in Warsaw. It won the Sanford St. Martin Trust Award for “Best Podcast.” Listen to it here."The Urbanist's Warsaw," New York Magazine, September 13, 2013. Read it here."In the Polish Aftermath," Tablet Magazine, April 17, 2013.Context and analysis of the Polish film Aftermath. Read it here. "A House is not a Home is an Idea: An attempt at filing in the gaps of the discourse surrounding Dom Kereta," Mała Kultura Współczesna, December 12, 2012. A reflection on visiting Keret House in Warsaw--the narrowest house in the world. Read it here."Poland's Real Jewish Revival," Tablet Magazine, November 26, 2012. This piece concerns a community of adults learning how to be Jewish at one of Warsaw’s synagogues in a program called “Judaism: Step by Step.” Read it here."Radek Szlaga's Freedom Club and The Mapping of American Schizophrenia," Mała Kultura Współczesna, October 10, 2012. This piece isn’t directly about Polish Jewish life, but about an exhibit built around the concept of the Unabomber Ted Kaczinski’s “Freedom Club.” It just so happens that The Unabomber shares a surname with two of Poland’s presidents. Read it here. thumbnail image: still from Yael Bartana’s And Europe Will Be Stunned (2011). https://denisegrollmus.com/Other-Writings Fri, 15 Nov 2019 03:22:22 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Other-Writings Other Writings A selection of my other writing, including personal essays, interviews, and literary criticsm “Austeria Rising,” Jewish Review of Books, August 7, 2018. “An Anthology Held Together by Earnestness,” LA Review of Books, April 30, 2018. A conversation with Leslie Jamison about her book The Recovering. "Will Teach for Food," Good Magazine, Spring 2012.&nbsp;"The Drunkalogues," The Rumpus, May 17, 2011.&nbsp;"Snapshots from a rock 'n' roll marriage," Salon, March 3, 2011.“Sound Savior,” Wax Poetics, December 2004A profile of Billy Bass, the first black DJ on AM radio and a founder of WMMS, Cleveland’s first experimental FM radio station. thumbnail image:&nbsp;Eva Hesse, ‘Repetition Nineteen III’, 1968 © The Estate of Eva Hesse https://denisegrollmus.com/Anthologies Wed, 13 Nov 2019 03:36:48 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Anthologies Anthologies A gallery of books in which my work has been anthologized <img width="1000" height="1500" width_o="1000" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b6049ee586f65a3115508c55d0f782f85518cfa0cd1037a75cc5c0952fffed41/akronanthology.jpg" data-mid="54659696" border="0" data-scale="15" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b6049ee586f65a3115508c55d0f782f85518cfa0cd1037a75cc5c0952fffed41/akronanthology.jpg" />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<img width="296" height="420" width_o="296" height_o="420" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a449cee51b116e57efd7ffc17c466ee6f8c2643487eb5196d303ab0cd1b6b037/girloncanvas.png" data-mid="54660378" border="0" data-scale="15" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/296/i/a449cee51b116e57efd7ffc17c466ee6f8c2643487eb5196d303ab0cd1b6b037/girloncanvas.png" /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <img width="317" height="475" width_o="317" height_o="475" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b313ee8ae8361d469e7b9045d68235cd4195c58bd9a27cf82c60d6b4b7410ae/rustbeltcleveland.jpg" data-mid="54660495" border="0" data-scale="14" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/317/i/6b313ee8ae8361d469e7b9045d68235cd4195c58bd9a27cf82c60d6b4b7410ae/rustbeltcleveland.jpg" />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<img width="332" height="499" width_o="332" height_o="499" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c2d14209e74c1cdd57da657ae185dbcec520fad3d0a997ffd4feb2703eda1354/bestamericancrimewritiing.jpg" data-mid="54659701" border="0" data-scale="14" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/332/i/c2d14209e74c1cdd57da657ae185dbcec520fad3d0a997ffd4feb2703eda1354/bestamericancrimewritiing.jpg" /> 2016“Snapshots from a Rock n’ Roll Marriage,” The Akron Anthology, edited by Jason Segedy, Cleveland, Belt Publishing, 176-189. An anthology of essays about Akron, Ohio. Introduction by David Giffels. My essay was orginally published on Salon. More info here. 2013 “I Am Married To Painting,” Girl on Canvas, edited by Pola Dwurnik and Izabela Kaszyńska, Warsaw, Apolonia Dwurnik, 32-36. A collection of essays inspired by the work of Pola Dwurnik. In Polish and English. Includes essays by Olga Tokarczuk, Anna Zawadszka, and other Polish thinkers and writers. More info here. 2012/2014“Speak In Tongues,” Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, edited by Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek, Cleveland, Belt Publishing, 103-107.A collection of essays about Cleveland. My essay recalls the punk collective and music venue, Speak In Tongues. More info here. 2006 &nbsp;&nbsp; “Sex Thief,” The Best American Crime Writing 2006, edited by Mark Bowden, New York, Harper Perennial, 2006, 293-307. See this page. https://denisegrollmus.com/Academic-Awards Fri, 15 Nov 2019 03:53:41 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Academic-Awards Academic Awards 2019 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Heilman Dissertation Prize for best dissertation, University of Washington Department of English 2018 &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Harlan Hahn Grant in Disability Studies, University of Washington Robert R. and Mary Waltz Dissertation Fellowship, University of Washington&nbsp; 2017 &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Distinguished Researcher Award, Department of English, University of Washington Opportunity Grant, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington &nbsp;&nbsp; 2014 &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Simpson Center for the Humanities Research Cluster Grant, University of Washington 2013 &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Top Scholar Fellowship, Graduate School, University of Washington Phillip Bernstein Fellowship, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington 2012&nbsp; IIE Fulbright Fellowship, Warsaw, Poland &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Writing Residency Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts 2010 &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Bunton-Waller Fellowship, Graduate School, Pennsylvania State University https://denisegrollmus.com/Journalism-Awards Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:47:37 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Journalism-Awards Journalism Awards 2013 Best Podcast, Sanford St. Martin Trust Awards: “The Jewish Revival in Poland,” Sounds Jewish, The Guardian2006Best American Crime Writing: “Sex Thief,” Cleveland Scene 1st Place, Best Consumer Reporting, Ohio SPJ Awards: “All The&nbsp;President’s Men,” Cleveland Scene 1st Place Public Service, Ohio Excellence In Journalism: “All The President’s Men,”&nbsp;Cleveland Scene 2nd Place Community/Local Coverage,&nbsp;Ohio Excellence In Journalism:&nbsp;“Suicide Bridge,” Cleveland Scene 2nd Place Technology Writing,&nbsp;Ohio Excellence In Journalism: “Kill Bill,” Cleveland Scene 1st Place Community/Local Coverage, Ohio Excellence In Journalism: “Stoll Survivors,” Cleveland Scene 2nd Place, Best Social Justice Reporting, Ohio SPJ Awards: “Stoll Survivors,” Cleveland Scene 2005 Best in Ohio: Essays, Ohio Excellence In Journalism&nbsp; (for a series of columns I wrote about “brain drain” while working at The Akron Beacon Journal) 2004 Fellowship, The Academy of Alternative Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University thumbnail image:&nbsp;Hugo Ball,&nbsp; Karawane, 1917 https://denisegrollmus.com/Translations Fri, 15 Nov 2019 03:45:23 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Translations Translations Kajzer, Abraham. Za drutami śmierci/Behind the Wires of Death. For Menache Kaiser’s memoir, Plunder, on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021 (Polish to English) Ostachowicz, Igor. Noc żywych Żydow/Night of the Living Jews. Warsaw: Wydawnich (2009), in progress (Polish to English) <img width="472" height="749" width_o="472" height_o="749" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aeac070e3da49b07901672e20a2371bfd563340f4c9c72db34190d30adee4d88/noczydow.jpeg" data-mid="54765178" border="0" data-scale="55" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/472/i/aeac070e3da49b07901672e20a2371bfd563340f4c9c72db34190d30adee4d88/noczydow.jpeg" /> https://denisegrollmus.com/Simpson-Center Wed, 13 Nov 2019 03:37:45 +0000 www.denisegrollmus.com https://denisegrollmus.com/Simpson-Center Simpson Center for the Humanities From 2019-2020, I was the Communications Manager at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities, where I worked with faculty and students to promote their scholarship and share their work with the public. The Simpson Center fosters intellectual discovery across boundaries, supporting cross-disciplinary exchange among scholars at the UW and beyond. These are links to some of the writing I did for the Simpson Center. I also developed a video series called Keywords.&nbsp;Aside from my writing, I’m currently redesiging their website. “CHCI-ACLS Fellow Joel Alden Schlosser on the Politics of Refusal, Ancient Greek Philosophy, and the Language of Flourishing,” November 2019.&nbsp; “Interrupting Privilege: UW Professor of Communication Ralina Joseph Is Teaching People to Talk About Race Across Generational and Racial Lines,” June 2019.&nbsp; “Unsettling Graduate Education: American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the UW,” May 2019. “Gillian Harkins Awarded Barclay Simpson Prize for Prison Education Work,” April 2019.